Dragon Hit the Roof (Unreported)

http://seanjmcnulty.blogspot.com/2011/09/dragon-hit-roof.html?spref=fb

Much of the following story draws on fragments of an unreported interview with Zeng Yi conducted by Miguel Raffle. The author wishes to thank Mr. Raffle for allowing portions of the interview to be reproduced for this piece.

‘I don’t care if anyone likes or buys my music. I just care about what they think of my public face as an artist. I want to be known as someone who represents something.’

A prevalent attitude amongst young Chinese alternative musicians today, but it’s one that seems to ring true also with the broader consensus of both traditional and modern Chinese thought. The notion of ‘face’ is a well-known feature of Chinese character. As Arthur Smith noted, it indicates a certain theatricality in being, life itself lived as a constant performance marked by an intrinsic awareness of the presence of others.

‘I am different,’ Yi continues. ‘In China these days, everyone is different. That’s just the way it is. But everyone pretends they’re not. I want to be known for being different.’

Zeng Yi is one of the most lauded Chinese musicians of recent years, though lauded only within the country’s boxed communities of alternative rock and electronic music. His story is one common amongst a new generation of young people who have sought to forge a new musical identity in China, one that is diverse in its scope and measure, and touched with musical developments from abroad as well as home fashions. Zeng Yi’s current album ‘Trillion Lists’ employs a number of genres such as twee indie, drone metal, and electropop, and subtly merges these styles with his own rather novel interpretation of traditional Chinese folk and ensemble music.

‘Someone told me a few years ago that one of my old punk bands didn’t sound Chinese. Fuck that, I said. Not all music has to sound from where it comes from. If music comes from one country, it doesn’t mean it has to stay there, it should be shared with everyone. Everyone should take part in it – not just listen to it, play it too.’

GAO KAO

Zeng Yi’s city is Wuhan, Hubei province, a growing metropolis along the Yangtze sludge. It’s the first and last city for him. It’s a glorious mess. In all his time on Earth, in all filed memory, it is that. An organisational nightmare. If not so young, he’d organise it himself, carefully plan an urban system that would contain and maintain these nine or so million individuals. He knows he can’t plan the individuals, of course. That is beyond planning and design, even in the wildest dreams of godfolk. This is one of the reasons why he loves his city. The people are terrifically disorganised in their doings and goings. They do and they go as they please, disorganised or not. Yi sometimes gets a little embarrassed about his city, but don’t we all about our hometowns. He loves the glorious mess really.

Yi is 17 years old. He’s about to do the college entrance exam, known as ‘gao kao’. He should be studying, feeding his brain with nuggets of information that can be regurgitated later, but he is not. He’s listening to his MP3 player. It’s playing a song by The Clash. It’s a very cheap MP3 player that he has saved up for and bought himself some months previous. He’s seen his classmates arguing over who has the better MP3 player. He has the cheapest MP3 in class, and that doesn’t go unnoticed, but he doesn’t care too much about it. Yi is happy with his MP3 – it plays the music he likes. All he is interested in is the music – Neil Young, The Kinks, Jimi Hendrix. His classmates don’t know anything about Western rock music. All they know of Western music is Westlife and Michael Jackson. What use is an expensive MP3 player if all it plays is Andy Lau and Jay Chou. If Yi owned that MP3 player, he would flush it down the fucking toilet, and say not a single thing more.

‘Where did you buy your MP3?’ asks Zhe, pointing at Yi’s beloved little musical device as it’s entering its daily Zeppelin shuffle. Zhe’s father is a famous presenter on Wuhan television. He interviews people and sometimes sings a song. You can see his image on all the Wuhan buses wearing a smart suit and holding up a child’s milk tea drink as if that’s all he drinks all day and night long.

‘Does it matter?’ answers Yi.

‘Yes, of course,’ says Zhe. Even if it’s poor quality, whatever life it has depends on where you bought it from. Where did you buy it?’

‘Just at a little stall.’

Zhe shakes his head with disgust, and starts to say a few more things about how bad those MP3 players are and how good his ipod is, but Yi simply smiles the disgust away. Silence the bastard. Use the hammer of the gods.

The Gao Kao (senior exam) is the final examination all Chinese students must take upon leaving high school. It is sometimes referred to as the college entrance test. High school students spend most of this time in their lives endlessly memorizing facts and figures and words which they’ll eventually be required to recite or rewrite. This exam will determine who is fit for university study and who is not. Finally sitting down to take the damn thing, Yi doesn’t feel fit at all. He walks out of the exam hall. He doesn’t feel like doing it. He knows his parents will be upset. He feels a little bad about that. But he has given up with life lived in the set direction. His classmates stare confusedly over their papers as he strolls magnificently away from them, casually plugging in his earphones as he passes a struggling Zhe.

He goes directly to his older friend Rong’s apartment. Rong has a guitar and has been teaching Yi how to play a Sex Pistols song for over a year now after school. Yi’s beginning to get the hang of it now.

‘Punk was the first thing we all got into,’ says Yi. ‘Most of us didn’t have anything else. I mean, we didn’t grow up with the Beatles like you people in the west. We didn’t have that. Beatles songs weren’t playing while we were having breakfast as 4 year olds. The radio wasn’t playing Bowie and mom wasn’t singing Elton John when we were growing up. I mean, yeah, there was a slow build-up of rock music in China coming out of some of the bigger cities, but it was very very slow. Then there was an explosion of punk in the early nineties. But we were still trailing behind everyone else. Our punk wasn’t the grunge and indie stuff that was happening in America and England. It was the bloody violent hardcore and stuff like that from the late seventies and early eighties. It was great. And there was so much of it for a long time. There still is. Especially in Wuhan. In Wuhan, we love it more than anyone. Wuhan is the punk capital of China.’

WUHAN PUNK

Yi is 22 years old. He is growing, as is his city. Wuhan is now an even more glorious mess as it contends with the modern Chinese indulgence for urban expansion. It’s a dualistic fantasy of skyscrapers and shanties. Yi hears jets scream by in the sky as old ladies scream at their old drunken husbands nearby. He is walking along Guang Ba road. He stops at a stall to buy a newspaper. The old man selling the newspapers asks him why he wants to buy a newspaper. The old man thinks it peculiar that someone so young would want a rag for reading in this day in age. Yi tells him he wants to know what exactly is being spun in the world today. The old man says, Okay, then asks him about his hair. What is that? the old man asks him. Yi has been fashioning his hair stormily high. He wants it to look like Lou Reed’s around the time of White Light. Yi privately knows he won’t be able to achieve that.

It’s my hair, he replied.

Okay, says the old man.

It’s July in Wuhan. Lunchtime. The heat is ferocious, devouring energy and smothering reason. On the crammed buses that go past, mosaics of damp faces are screaming for escape. Yi has arranged to meet Ming, the band’s bass player, for secret talks – the meeting has, in fact, been called to conduct a private moan for the joint disgruntled. They are both unhappy with their band’s current state of affairs. The singer and guitarist is Wen, who commandeers the group’s activities with the tyrannical charge of a local official’s son, which indeed he is. Wen irritates them both immensely. He writes good songs, but performs them with enforced arrogance, a Gallagher for Asia, yet more developing middle class than working class hero. He often berates the other members on-stage like the privileged kids at school. Yi hated school because of those privileged kids, the ones who became class monitors, and made life hell for everyone else. Fuckers. Wen is one of those types. Yi has, on more than one occasion, contemplated killing him mid-performance to rescue the band and enjoy the additional applause he’s sure the act would elicit from audiences.

There are four waitresses at Huang Xi Que, the café bar Yi has arranged to meet Ming at. Huang Xi Que means yellow magpie, considered by many to be a symbol of luck and outside there is a huge picture of one such yellow magpie, though rather distinctively possessing only one leg. When the owner is asked about the anomaly, he usually says the magpie lost the leg in a duel, and avoids reference to the artist responsible for the painting, or that artist’s abilities as an artist. Inside Huang Xi Que, the staff enjoy the Chinese version of siesta, slumped over tables and chairs, ghostly heads of long black hair dripping to the floor like a Japanese horror film. The manager is also there, spread out across the bar, snoring loudly. One of the waitresses is awake. She is drowsy and yawning sporadically but she muscles through this fatigue in order to continue her chat on the house PC. The familiar sound effects of QQ, the most popular social networking tool in China, fill the air – BEEPBEEP – KNOCKKNOCK – BEEPBEEP.

‘I don’t want to play another show with him,’ Ming tells Yi as they set to work on their glasses of free hot water, all they can really afford in a café bar.

‘I know,’ says Yi. ‘I can’t stand the shows anymore also. But we have to at least do this gig on Thursday. It’s the money, you know. It feels nice to earn my own money. Do you not think it’s better to earn your own money instead of taking everything from your parents?’

‘Yeah, of course. But even if I don’t take the money off them, they’re going to expect back that money they didn’t give me sometime in the future. It’s the lifetime loan. A contract we’re made to sign at birth. So if I’m going to look after them when they’re older, they’d better be sure to look after me now.’

‘I don’t care about making lots of money, but I’d like to at least get used to making some of my own, you know. I’m happy just collecting scraps. Even better if I’m making it through the music.’

The QQ sounds stop and some music begins playing in the background. The waitress who has been chatting online performs a perfect yawn before her head falls clunking down on the table next to the computer. Yi and Ming smile with satisfaction at one another. They’ve already had their lunchtime naps.

‘I’m not sure if I want to do the punk and indie stuff anymore,’ says Yi.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know, I’d just like to try doing something different for a while. It’s getting shit. There are too many bands doing the same stuff around here. SMZB are the only ones I still consider true to their word.’ (SMZB were one of the first punk bands to emerge in Wuhan, in the mid-nineties. They set the bar high for many bands to come in later years, be they punk or not, by acutely embodying the politically aware and oft-reactionary elements of rock n’roll within the notoriously oppressive political milieu that is China.)

‘Well, our music doesn’t owe so much to SMZB,’ Ming says. ‘Maybe years ago, yeah. But everything’s more opened up now. I mean, I hate Wen, but I don’t necessarily hate the music we’ve been making. We’re not being dishonest about things. It says a lot about us, and the music we’ve been inspired by.’

‘I’m not so sure it says a lot about us,’ says Yi. But I know what you mean.’

‘Punk was the easiest music to play. You could just bash and thrash away at it even if you hadn’t really learned how to play your instrument and if it didn’t make any sense musically everyone still buzzed on the energy and belligerence of it. But I think the main reason it appealed and still appeals to the young Chinese is because it’s just the ultimate ‘fuck you’, isn’t it? We don’t get to say ‘fuck you’ enough. Fuck the system! Fuck the government! You must understand how fantastic that makes a large number of us feel.’

‘I wasn’t there for Cui Jian* or even for the first wave of punk bands. I mean, I was there, but I was too young. But it excited me so much that I went back and I listened to it. Most Chinese my age when I was growing up wouldn’t listen to any music, or watch a film, if it was too old. I thought that was silly. I went back in time and listened to Cui Jian and then all the early punk bands. But just like those artists themselves, it was the foreign bands that really shocked me and made me want to do it myself. I started listening to stuff like Hendrix and the Beach Boys and then Nirvana and a lot of typical indie from the eighties and nineties, and suddenly I was going down all kinds of different roads, listening to lots of odd experimental stuff. It got to a point where the music I was listening to was so far removed from everything that was the order of day in China that I even had a difficult time relating to some of the punk rockers.’

*Cui Jian is usually credited as the first Chinese rock star. His rise to fame in the mid-eighties preceded the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing, and his deeply felt and politically conscious music was not only a powerful beginning for rock music in China, but a persuasive awakening for many of that generation.

CLASS WARRIOR

‘Listen to that,’ Yi says to Ming.

‘What?’

‘The music.’

They both pause and listen carefully to the music playing in the Huang Xi Que café bar. The manager has woken from his nap and turned the volume up slightly. Yi notices that there is not just one song playing, but two. One is a quite famous Taiwanese pop song and the other a less well known American R N’B song. The songs are both playing at the same level, the same volume, and at the same time, but from different speakers. It sounds absolutely horrible. Yi and Ming wait for a moment to see if any of the staff members will become aware of the blunder and rise to mend the situation. But nobody is aware and nobody becomes so. Those who aren’t still asleep go about their chores as though there is no music playing at all.

‘Chinese stereo,’ laughs Ming.

They know that the only way they can get the music fixed is to bring it to the manager’s attention themselves, but they decide just to leave it the way it is. Yi is happy to consent to Huang Xi Que’s own sense of liberty. Although the music they play is bland pop music of the least interesting kind, the café bar itself is one of Yi’s favourites in Wuhan, relaxed and modern, yet lacking the lavish decoration that marks most modern establishments of its breed.

One of the waitresses gets very animated suddenly as three new customers arrive. In her excitement rushing to the doorway, she knocks her leg against a chair, and welcomes them with a forced and flushed smile that barely manages to mask her pain, before limping across the café and covering her face with her hands. The newly arrived customers are about the same age as Yi and Ming, a boy and two girls, in their early or mid-twenties, who stroll proudly into the café carrying a number of famous brands of clothes on their shopping bags. Yi hates the mounting obsession with appearances that is presently widespread, but even he can’t help judging these people on how they look. He quietly sucks in his disdain for their dull but fashionable clothes and hairstyles, and attempts to remind himself that a good class warrior leaves the door open for all people, allowing them to make their entrance peacefully, before any view to eviction is discussed. As Yi is suppressing his judgments, Ming speaks.

‘I know that guy,’ he says, indicating the boy.
Yi shoots a studious look over. The boy is sitting with his back turned, his full attention on the two girls. For a moment, Yi can only make out his hairstyle with absolute clarity as it is a hairstyle Yi has seen many times before, on people, in magazines, on cartoon characters, even on a preciously groomed poodle once. As the hobbling waitress approaches the table to take their order, the boy turns his head and Yi can make out his profile.

‘He’s Chen Jun’s son,’ says Ming. ‘You know, the guy from television.’

‘Yeah,’ says Yi. ‘I know him too. Chen Zhe. I went to high school with him.’

‘My favourite music is German. I’ve always loved the bands that came out known as krautrock. I love Can and Ash Ra Tempel.’

How did that go down with the punk rock scene in Wuhan?

‘Well, it was a different time. During the 2000’s, everything changed. There were many more young people listening to alternative stuff, even avant-garde, and then using that to work on their own music. In Beijing, lots of new bands appeared, who were more influenced by post-punk, new wave, and indie than they were by ground-level punk. So it was easier to meet people who were also into bands like Can or Faust. Actually, it was through those German bands that I eventually appreciated a lot of Japanese music. The Japanese blew my mind. They inspired me a lot. And all they were really doing was taking from western influences and mixing it just like us. But they were doing it a long time before us. I got into many arguments at the start when I mentioned the Japanese bands. It amazed me how far they had travelled with it, whereas in China, we were still only teething. When I said this to people, a big fight would start. There has always been an anti-Japanese feeling in China, even more since the war, with reason of course, but in recent times, the nationalism has become more intense as we get more visible in the world. As a fucking economic power or whatever. The party makes it worse because they’re always beating their chests these days, trying to make themselves out to be more nationalistic than they really are. So even if people don’t violently despise the Japanese, they have at least a kind of overstated suspicion of them. I just liked all that cool music.’

MILITANTS

‘Hey,’ says Zhe, in English, as he spots Yi and Ming. Why say ‘hello’ in English? We’re not foreigners, thinks Yi. Zhe rises from his chair and approaches them excitedly, patting them both on their backs. ‘It’s great to see you,’ he chimes. ‘It’s been such a long time.’ Something about this cheerful manner makes Yi feel bad about quietly treating Zhe with hostility. He doesn’t necessarily approve of this kind of excessive goodwill, but he can’t bring himself to disapprove either. At this moment, Yi suffers a collapse of identity as the realization of his own inconsistency as a person sounds itself aggressively at his door. BEEPBEEP – KNOCKKNOCK – BEEPBEEP

‘What are you doing these days?’ Zhe asks Ming. He seems to recognize Ming much better than Yi. Yi isn’t sure if Zhe actually remembers him at all.

‘Oh, nothing, really,’ says Ming. ‘Just playing shows as usual. Enjoying life and fearing it on the side.’

‘Good, good. You’re still playing rock music, yes?’ laughs Zhe.

‘Yes,’ says Ming.

‘I thought you would have stopped that a long time ago.’

‘No, we’re still doing it. We have a band. We’ve got a show on Thursday.’

‘Good, good. What’s the name of your band?’

‘We’re called Militant Mothers,’ says Ming.

‘That’s funny,’ laughs Zhe. ‘I have a militant mother.’

‘So have I,’ says Ming.

Yi doesn’t say anything even though it is his mother who actually inspired the name. Yi is these days especially cautious with regards band names. He has accepted the power a band’s name can exert. It is after all their immediate face, something which should frame their content perfectly. He’d encountered many good acts before who he just couldn’t take seriously at all because they had terrible names. It’s so easy to think of an adequate name for a band. Why settle for something stupid? The previous names for Militant Mothers, in its early existence, he’d considered annoyingly recycled and meaningless.

Grassmonkey
The Understanders
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
Monkey’s Fire
Fuck in the Grass

Zhe asks Yi and Ming to join him at his table. He feels it only right as there is nobody else in the café but them. Ming instantly cries Yes and rises to go to the other table. Yi gets up slowly in response to this and follows.

The girls are called Ikuko and Ling. They are discussing their late purchases when Zhe interrupts to introduce Ming and ……?

‘Yi.’

‘Ah, yes,’ says Zhe. ‘Good, good. Yi. Sorry, I forgot your name. But I always remember you. I think everyone who was there that day will never forget you. And those of you who weren’t there, let me tell you. This….this…..Yi…..stood up and walked out of the gao kao. Minutes after we started. It was crazy.’

‘The gao kao is crazy,’ says Yi.

Yi and Ming are not long sitting down before conversation erupts, the issue of their musicianship being almost first on the agenda. Although Zhe and the two girls are quite different from Yi and Ming in many areas (status, style, influences, aspirations), they are yet brisk and intelligent, so the conversation spills out with ever-increasing vigour.

What are your songs? IKUKO

Do we know them? LING

Maybe. MING

No. YI

No? IKUKO.

Why not? LING

Yeah, why not? MING

Well, you don’t know who we are. YI

Why should that make a difference? LING

Because only then would you have possibly heard us. YI

Really? LING

Have you made any videos? IKUKO

No. MING

Okay. IKUKO

Yeah, maybe we haven’t heard them. LING

There is quiet and then:

Ikuko? YI

Yes. IKUKO

Are you Japanese? YI

Of course NOT! IKUKO, angrily.

No? YI

NO! IKUKO

Your name sounds like a Japanese name. YI

Well, it’s not! I’m Chinese. I hate
Japan! IKUKO

Ok, sorry, I thought for a second...YI

I’d kill myself if I was Japanese, the shame… IKUKO

Forgive me. What’s in a name anyway? YI

Fucking Japanese. ZHE

I like Japanese movies. MING

I don’t watch them. LING

It’s funny how we hate Japanese, but their
style is everywhere. YI

What do you mean? LING

Movies, fashion, hairstyles. Very
Japanese these days. YI

Bullshit. IKUKO

Yeah, I don’t agree. ZHE

Yeah, I wouldn’t say that either. Not too much anyway. MING

Even Chinese comics about Chinese culture look like Japanese comics these days. YI

What? How? IKUKO

Just in design, the style of the drawings. YI

I don’t see it. LING

There’s nothing wrong with that. YI

Of course not. MING

People should just consider these things before arguing for nationalism. YI

Just because Japanese are good at some things doesn’t excuse what they did. ZHE

That’s true. LING

Yeah, I know, of course. YI

Because you know what they did? IKUKO

Yeah, of course, I know. YI

Yi wonders then if this argument is winnable. He has won it before. But he isn’t sure if he can succeed this time. Ikuko is so pretty. She looks like Zhang Ziyi when she played that Japanese geisha girl.

‘There are many of us who stand up for individuality. For freedom of speech and thought. We’ll protest this, contest that. But the problem is that the great many of us that are out there remain a minority in a country with a population of this scale. And we’re usually either silenced in the media or painted as enemies of the people. Being an enemy of the party is not being an enemy of the people. But tell that to the majority of Chinese. Everyone has been conditioned to think that’s the way. The only ones who seem to really get it are the country people. And I think they only get it because they still have to live with many of the old hardships. Poverty and the strain of physical labour. They can see through the government’s ploys. The one thing that really annoys me is that all of us who dispute the communist party actually love our country a great deal. We are Chinese just like the party and its members. We are Chinese. We love our country. This is why we find cause to criticize. Our nationality is such a huge part of our lives that we must consider it at all times.’

HERE COMES THE CITY

A small old woman enters Huang Xi Que, looking stooped and worn, and carrying a tray of edibles that Zhe, Ling, and Ikuko ordered just before arriving. She appears frail at the outset, but the spring in her step surfaces when she spots her customers. She dashes to their table with the agility and instinct of someone half her age.

‘Food?’ Zhe asks Yi and Ming.

‘Thanks,’ says Ming.

‘Good, good.’

‘Is there enough?’

‘Of course.’

‘Thank you.’

‘More chopsticks,’ Zhe yaps at the old lady.

‘What?’

‘Chopsticks.’

‘Oh? Yes. How many?’

‘Two more.’

The old woman leaves to get the chopsticks.

‘She couldn’t understand me,’ says Zhe. ‘There are too many people from the countryside in Wuhan these days. You have to say everything twice and very loudly because they don’t understand the dialect.’

‘Not just that, they’re too simple also,’ laughs Ling.

‘Yeah, they’re not made for the city,’ adds Zhe.

The old woman reminds Yi of his grandmother, an aged thing of deceptive aptitude, mightier than one would first be led to believe. Yi’s grandmother lives in northern Jiangsu province on a sizable plot of land. Her land is no longer the farming bounty it once was as a result of gradual construction and development in the area which has reduced much of its agricultural promise. Urban landscapes appear to be spreading faster, getting closer and closer to her largely uninhabited region. ‘We’ll be in the city soon enough,’ she often says. ‘And no bus. The city’s coming to us.’ Yet even with the encroaching urbanization, she continues willingly with the severe toil of her existence, planting and picking and shovelling and scraping and hoisting and hauling, while her husband sits in silence, capable only of watching, weakened as he is with age and arthritis. Some would say it’s a simple existence. But having lived it himself, Yi sees it as anything but. He considers his grandmother a superhero. Better than a superhero because she’s real. Yi goes to see his grandparents every New Year. Each year he observes that something new has been added to their home, be it for comfort or safety, flourishes donated by his mostly absent father. There was money enough long ago to move them to a more comfortable living arrangement in Nanjing, but they refused to budge. ‘What would we know about life in the city?’ says grandmother. ‘Going there at this time in life would only make things more complicated than they already are. We’re fine right here. Anyway, the cities are coming to us. We have to stay to show them how things work around here.’

The last time Yi visited them, he couldn’t pinpoint the area where they lived as the surrounding hills he’d always had for geographical guidance had become even more obscured by the new contours of recently upped structures. As he left on the bus, he looked back to see his waving grandparents fade gradually in the fog of hot steam and fume.

‘I have friends who share many of my opinions, but they tend to stay away from certain topics when they’re talking to foreigners. Things like corruption, they’ll usually try to stay away from, I think, only because they’re a little embarrassed about it. It’s common for all of us here in China to consider corruption a natural part of the social order. And it’s true that everyone encounters it at some level in their lifetime. It can be very small corruption, or very big corruption. Obviously nobody really cares much about small corruption. It’s the big corruption everyone troubles over. Because with so few people with so much money fucking people over and so many more people with so little money getting fucked over, there has to be restlessness somewhere.’

Are you saying that small corruption is tolerated, but big corruption isn’t?

‘Yeah, I’d say so. You see, what you would consider small corruption in western countries, most Chinese wouldn’t consider corruption at all. Like backhanders in business, or minor bribery. In China, these things are just an accepted part of society. Pretty normal everyday transactions. But when an official screws a whole community out of millions, or pursues a greedy life to the injury of others, that’s big corruption, and usually that isn’t tolerated. But with the party being so dominant in society with its new call of get rich, get rich, get rich, more and more of these officials choose corruption and many of the fuckers get away with it, regardless of the intolerant mood.’

FAMOUS CHINA STAR

Yi had been wondering how exactly Ming knew Zhe. Now it comes.

‘How is your father?’ asks Ming.

‘He’s fine,’ says Zhe.

‘It’s a pity he doesn’t do those music competitions anymore. Militant Mothers could use something like that for exposure.’

‘What?’ cries Yi. ‘That’s not the kind of exposure we want.’

‘Why not?’

Yi acknowledges that his comment may have appeared rude and disrespectful of Zhe’s father, Chen Jun. He decides to re-imagine his statement with more sensitivity even though he really doesn’t have any respect for Chen Jun at all.

‘I mean, his show is more for pop singers, and pop groups. We just wouldn’t fit in.’

‘I don’t know,’ says Ming. ‘I think we should try everything. Nobody knows who we are. We’ve played six shows in two years. All here in Wuhan.’

‘Well, you know who we can blame for that.’

‘We can’t blame Wen on everything. Yeah, he’s an asshole, but we should blame ourselves too. We haven’t done anything about it. I don’t care about doing one of those competitions on television because at least we’d be taking larger steps.’

Chen Jun presents an enormously successful chat and entertainment show on Wuhan television. He is a celebrated media star in Hubei province. His show at one time included a pop music item which sought to find a new ‘Famous China Star’. Ming entered the competition some years before. Back then, he was a singer-songwriter. Main influences: Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan. He failed to progress to any significant stage in the competition, but it was during the making of the show that he met Zhe, who was also competing. Back then, Zhe was a singer too. Main influences: Andy Lau, Wang Leehom. Zhe did manage to progress to the later stages of the competition and eventually won the entire thing with a slick and stirring version of Andy Lau’s ‘Chinese People’. The judges found Zhe to be a worthy new ‘Famous China Star’. There was little controversy at the time about the fact that Zhe’s father was the presenter, producer, and overall controller of the show. Everyone just applauded the outcome, and there were even tears in some eyes as father and son embraced and celebrated their mutual success together live on-air.

Chen Jun ran into a spot of bother some years ago when a controversy did arise surrounding his relationship with senior officials in the province. A story was leaked to various media that the renowned television presenter had taken advantage of his advertising contract with a brand of children’s tea in order to bribe a lawmaker in exchange for his aid in securing some property in Yichang. Questions were asked when the official’s neighbours began to notice the abundance of little milk tea drinks for children he appeared to have in his possession. It was first noticed when the people in the apartment directly below found milk leaking from their ceiling one afternoon. When they went to his apartment to fix the situation, they were shocked to see apparently thousands of the little cartons shelved and stacked in every available space of his abode. Why did he have so many, of what use were they to him, and how did he come to have them? ‘I enjoy them,’ was the lawmaker’s only defense. The case went away soon, however, as evidence for corruption appeared too vague, and difficult to prove genuine.

Are you ok? IKUKO

Ah? YI

He looked to be in a kind of trance, nodding his head as though to an imaginary beat.

Are you ok? You seem tired. IKUKO

Yes, yes, I’m good. Sorry. I just started hearing a song in my head.YI

Anything good? MING

Yes, actually. Exactly the kind of music
WE should be playing. YI

Good, good. ZHE

What is it? IKUKO

Anything we know? LING

No, it’s just music in my head. YI

But what is it? IKUKO

I don’t know. YI

Can you sing it? LING

Oh no! YI

Why not? IKUKO

It’s not the kind of music you can sing.
YI

What kind of music is it? ZHE

Yeah, describe it. IKUKO

Well, it sounds like….YI

Yeah? LING

Buildings spilling onto motorways. YI

What? IKUKO

And gnawing on huge metallic limbs. YI

Eh? ZHE

Coughing giant granite chunks. YI

Huh? IKUKO

And pounding hard steel innards. YI

What? LING

Cool! MING

Since you began to expand your musical scope, how have audiences in China reacted to the eclectic nature of the material? I mean, for example, the rather abstract drone metal you’ve blended with traditional music.

‘My audiences like it. But usually the audiences I get are people you can approach with this kind of stuff. They wouldn’t be standing there listening if they weren’t capable of trying out something different. I’m sure not all of them like what they hear, but they can at least play the part of a polite audience, which is all you really want. And in Wuhan, they’re great. The Wuhan audience is my favourite because they go crazy. Especially in the overwhelming heat of the summer months when Wuhan burns under the sun. The people go a little crazy, I think, in that extreme high temperature. They jump all over the place, hitting the roof, punching the air, almost like they’re fighting off the heat. The rock music, punk or metal or whatever, inspires them to fight back. It’s so much fun to watch, and to be a part of. I’ve been a part of it myself many times, of course. I played a show at the Vox bar in Wuhan last year during Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) and a few in the crowd brought dragon costumes and did a dragon dance while I performed. They did it in the traditional way, but the music made them go even further, thrashing around ferociously with the crazy spirit. It was like a hotpot in the place, our own established customs squaring up to a new world of wild energy. It wasn’t for purists, but it was amazing, I can tell you.’

Is there a strong metal following in China?

‘Yeah, there’s lots of it. When Militant Mothers ended, Jiang Ming and I started the band toiletissue, which was a big contrast from the music we’d been doing in Mothers. We concentrated on loud sludge metal instead of continuing down the indie rock road. Doing that music really freed me in a way, so there’s certainly a lot of metal in the music I do now. Metal is the beast in China’s sewers, born from all the industrial piss and shit. Wuhan is an industrial city. Its true soundtrack today is a heavy noise rumbling deep in your stomach.’

BUSINESS T.I.E

Yi wonders if Ikuko is attached to Zhe. He studies their movements and reactions, hoping for a clue into their situation, and hoping also that if Zhe is in a relationship with one of these girls, it is Ling who receives his affection. Although Yi diverts himself with these thoughts, he suffers also in the concession that even if Ikuko is unattached, she’d most likely cringe at the concept of having anything to do with him in a romantic way. He can’t help but view them both as being from very different corners of modern society. A pairing would only result in a tugging back and forth of various ideologies that would ultimately lead to at least one broken heart. But she is so pretty. He can’t help himself. He now sees all the bland mass-produced symbols of romantic love flickering and hovering around her. Roses, cupids, hearts, and kisses – they hang about her in the moment of his fancy but turn out to be mere mosquitoes on the hunt when he snaps out of it. As he pictures them together, in all its unlikelihood, he begins to see himself as even more of a stranger amongst his own people. How would his wife deal with his fondness for books about witchcraft in Europe and his love of old Hammer horror movies from the UK? Could she appreciate the tattooed skull and bones on his back? Could she swap some nights out with her girlfriends in the conservative pop nightclubs and karaoke clubs of Wuhan for a few nights at punk gigs where the one toilet is never cleaned and the singer of the band spits at you constantly and you’re supposed to love it?

‘I can’t imagine what kind of music you play,’ laughs Ikuko. ‘You’re both too weird.’

‘I’m not weird,’ says Ming. ‘But he’s weird, yes, you’re right.’

‘Why didn’t you keep singing?’ Ling asks Zhe. ‘You could have been REALLY famous. You were so good.’

‘I still sing from time to time,’ Zhe replies. ‘At parties and things like that. But I had to grow up. I had other things I needed to accomplish.’

‘What other things?’ asks Yi.

‘Business,’ answers Zhe.

Ling and Ikuko nod approvingly.

‘Ah, business,’ says Ming. ‘What kind of business do you do now?’

‘Mostly trade’ says Zhe. ‘Import and export. My father has helped me a lot. He’s a great businessman. He knows many important people.’

Ling and Ikuko nod approvingly.

Yi realizes that people these days always say the same thing when you ask them what they do for a living. ‘Business, Trade, Import and Export.’ It’s as though they’ve been educated in such a way as to answer only ‘Business, trade, import and export’ to nearly every question they are asked. He imagines that the education part of it consists of students simply mouthing ‘Business, trade, import and export’ constantly until it is mouthed well enough to effectively create the appropriate status picture. Hundreds of students in a huge courtyard shouting ‘Business, trade, import and export’ while carrying out generic martial arts exercises. That’s what Yi imagines it’s like. That’s how he remembers school anyway.

‘Could you ever see yourself not doing what you do, and taking on a normal job?

'A normal job? I think that what I do is a normal job. I’m not going to say it’s as hard as what most of my countrymen are doing for a living. That would be a fucking stupid thing to say. The only difference is I am lucky enough to be doing something I enjoy. Not just that, to be doing something also that I believe firmly can help do some good. I wish more people were as lucky as me, to be honest. Anyway, having a job and living the ‘normal’ life swallows up a lot of your energy. There’s too much energy wasted on status. Everyone’s worried about their status. The status quo is the status show. The symbols of power and wealth are all the same in China these days. It’s all dressing up. The clothes being worn are big black cars, expensive liquors, and fucking iphones.’

And you don’t wear these clothes, I take it?

‘Well, no. I’m naked compared to most people. I have status, I suppose. We all have status. But it’s not a status I have to dress up for.’

What about the clothes you’re wearing now? [Yi is wearing a fashionable but rumpled T-shirt, frayed blue jeans, and a pair of muddied Converse.] Are these not the costumes of the average rocker? Do they not befit your status?

‘They say something about who I am, yes, but they don’t say more than they should. Listen. My clothes don’t speak more than their most basic fashion statement. They’re not branded with the price tag that’s going to help me achieve a social and spiritual perfection.’

MOUNTAIN MAN

After they’ve finished eating, Zhe orders coffees for everyone, overriding Yi’s weak announcement of ‘I have to leave soon.’ Apart from in foreign-owned cafés, and in foreigner-targeted establishments, most Chinese continue to drink more tea than they do coffee. The coffee culture itself in China is a good marker of the change occurring within the new generation who are more willing to adopt foreign habits than their parents. Go to any of the Starbuck’s that have sprung up throughout China’s cities and you’ll find many young people sitting with their laptops, basking quite comfortably in the new chic of it. They don’t sell much coffee at Huang Xi Que however even though there is a sign saying ‘café’ outside that is almost as large as the one-legged magpie next to it. You’d be forgiven for thinking of Huang Xi Que as fundamentally a teahouse despite its foreign-y garb like framed photos of has-been pop stars and premier league footballers.

Yi hears an acoustic guitar playing. He reflects on the first guitar he owned, a cheap acoustic that his older friend Rong had given to him in return for going into the supermarket and stealing a packet of frozen dumplings for him every day for a month. Rong didn’t have much money, so he was happy to accept dinners for a month as barter for the instrument. The dumplings Yi stole were Rong’s favourite kind on top, the expensive pork ones he’d rarely been able to afford. This brief tenure as criminal lingers for Yi as one of the most frightening periods of his life – each day, he bore the dread of being discovered at the doorway, the dumplings slipping from his jacket in full view of the security guard. Rong is now himself a security guard in a New World Plaza shopping centre. He wears a policeman’s uniform and whistles songs by the Dead Kennedy’s to himself until it’s time to clock off.

Yi would later save enough money, from odd jobs and occasional donations from his shadow of a father, to purchase the black Gibson SG he currently owns, which he calls Yu. Yu is a living guitar that bleeds if Yi plays it too hard. This is why it’s always covered in band-aids. People regularly ask why that is. ‘She’s scarred from her wild living, but she soldiers onwards,’ he tells people. ‘Jimi Hendrix’s guitar often had a cardiac arrest during shows, so it’s no big deal.’

Playing the guitar now is a young man who arrived in a quiet minute, without Yi or the others paying heed. He’s sitting at a table with some friends at the back of the café. They look for all intent and purposes like mountain men who’ve come down from the hills for the day to play songs on acoustic guitars in cafés (teahouses). The man plays very well, and immediately gets Yi’s ear. At first, he plays what sounds like the typical folk music you hear in typical teahouses, then he moves to Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Never Going Back Again’, which he performs with some skill, and then finally adapts Cui Jian’s famous ‘Nothing to my Name’, and sings:

我要给你我的追求I want to give you my dreams,

还有我的自由And give you my freedom,

可你却总是笑我But you always just laugh at me

一无所有With nothing to my name

噢 你何时跟我走Oh-oh-o-o-oh, when will you go with me?

Yi knows the lyrics, and the man’s sincere performance touches something inside him, perhaps the heart of his own particular strain of patriotism, in much the same way it probably touched all those people across the country, be they student or worker, in the late eighties. Listening to the song being performed by the mountain man at that specific moment in time, a song that firmly reels back to another specific moment in time, makes him board a train of thought that is filled with the great joys and struggles of his life.

Great song! MING

Yeah, brilliant. YI

What is it? IKUKO

Don’t you know this song? ZHE

No. It sounds familiar. IKUKO

Cui Jian. MING

Isn’t he really old? IKUKO

Yeah. MING

Very famous. ZHE

Too old for me. LING

This is a classic song. MING

It’s a really important song. YI

Why important? IKUKO

Well, there is a political angle. YI

I hate old songs. LING

Political? IKUKO

Yeah, Cui Jian was very critical of the government. YI

It doesn’t sound political. IKUKO

There are double meanings in it. YI

I don’t understand. LING

That guy’s a good guitar player. ZHE

Yes, he’s doing a good version of it. YI

He looks like a thief. LING

Yeah, he’s really good, I like his playing
too. MING

Yi rises and says farewell, leaving Ming to continue having coffee and talking with the others. As he leaves, he thinks for a moment he’s detected some disappointment in Ikuko’s face, but quickly puts this down to his faintness for firm relations, as constant as the Wuhan heat in July. Zhe rises also and offers a traditional kung-fu salute, a slight bow, with his right fist shielded by his left palm. The gesture creates a feeling of warmth in Yi towards Zhe that he never thought he could ever feel around the guy. Friendship and brother and sisterhood and all that. Yeah.
On leaving Huang Xi Que and the comfort of its air conditioning, he is almost persuaded to duck for cover as that fucking July sun mounts another attack.

Let me ask you, what do you see in the future? I mean, not just for yourself, but for Chinese music, and China as a whole? Sorry if that’s too loaded a question. I’ll reword it….

'More money, lots of it there, but less of it to feel, to touch, to hold.'

Okay.

As our interview ends, and I wave good-bye to Zeng Yi, I walk away with a peculiarly conflicted feeling, at once annoyed by the confusion his opinions have left me with, at once fascinated by the growing valiance of modern China he so dynamically epitomizes. The following is a question I’m often asked by other foreign commentators on this matter:

‘Is it really possible for these young musicians to successfully realize their unorthodox ambitions within such a complex and constraining system as China’s?’

Not being an expert on the subject myself, I could point those concerned towards any number of expertly-helmed social, historical, and political studies of the country and its current predicament of great change in the hope they could formulate an answer for themselves, or bring them at least closer to an understanding of just what it is that makes China tick right now. That MIGHT do it. It JUST might. In my own view, the answer to this question does not require that kind of radically extensive scrutiny, however I do believe it’s a question which cannot be answered in the directness one from the west has come to expect. I would advise the concerned individual to seek out recordings by Chinese artists, or better still, get out there, see the bands perform, witness for yourself the striking defiance, the loud guitars, the changing mood. The question may yet have been answered.

*

Yi is walking along the tree-lined borders of the East Lake watching people as they swim and paddle in the water, desperately seeking escape from the ruthless sun. The heat has made them crazy enough to dip themselves in the dodgy parts, next to sewer lines, and construction sites. People are pixilated in the gleam, their figures hazy, almost unreal.

Worms lie baked beneath him as he walks, scorched black mid-squirm by the violent heat. He finds himself accidentally stepping on one or two, and they crunch to pieces under his feet, observes one still wriggling with life as it struggles against the glare of the sun. He senses the heat suddenly intensifying, almost as though the sun is fortifying its assault on this stubborn little worm, frustrated and angry with the nuisance of it.

Yi watches as the worm fights against the roast, eventually shaking off its crispiness, and breaking out of the sun’s death-grasp.

Its size increases suddenly and rapidly. Puffing up and bulging out, extending and thinning again, the worm changes form, soon becoming a huge, elegant dragon. Almost immediately it takes flight, pausing for a moment in mid-air to get used to its new mass, then unfolding itself to more formidable shape and shooting upwards with great speed.

Yi watches as it joins a gathering throng of dragons in the sky. They rise up together in pattern like a great scaly clawed hand reaching into the heavens.

The dragons are getting out of the city for the day. It’s much too hot down there. They have a bone to pick with the sun, its searing dominion having charred and scarred them for way too long. Yi watches as they throw all the flames they can muster in its direction, hoping it will back down somewhat.

Most everyone below flees for home as the skies above erupt to the screeches and howls of battle.

Hundreds of dragons, thousands, continue to assemble and beat hard against the great beating heart of the firmament.

Yi is impressed and gladdened finally when, facing the fire of revolt, the sun retreats into its evening cave, beaten at least for now in this people’s fantasy.